Philomena Book Totally Different Than the Movie

         The theme for our next Book Club is “Read a Book and Watch the Movie”.  We had the same theme back in 2015, and at that time, I chose “Philomena” and that was an amazing choice, because the book was totally different from the movie based on the book.

The movie:

           While both based on a true story, the movie focused on the yearnings of Philomena, the Irish woman who became pregnant in her teens, back in the 1950’s.  Being unmarried, she was forced into to an institution, for “fallen women”, which was run by Catholic nuns.  There she gave birth to a son, who she adored for 3 years during those brief periods when she was not being forced into near slavery, in the money-making laundry run by the Church.  The nuns then sold her son to a Catholic family in America who wanted to adopt him.

       The loss and longing to be reunited with her son, was kept secret and tore at Philomena’s the heart, until very late in life when finally she told the story to her daughter.  The daughter told Martin Sixsmith, an author about her mother’s story, and  he and Philomena, fly to America to piece together clues in an attempt to try and find Philomena’s long lost son.   

        It was a very touching story, that really doesn’t end well, since her son, a lawyer who had risen to a high rank in the Republican party, had died a few years earlier of AIDS.  He had spent his whole life trying to find his birth mother, who he vaguely remembered, but was always stonewalled by the Irish nuns at the orphanage.

The book:

        Philomena the book, takes a totally different direction than the film.  It starts out with the Philomena giving birth at the orphanage, her love for her young son, and her devastating grief at his removal, but then the rest of the book follows the life of Mike, that son, as he is whisked away to a new country, a new family, and then documents his life, growing up in the turbulent last half of the 20th century.  

        Mike struggles with being raised in the Church, after discovering that he is gay.  He finally accepts his sexuality and secretly lives a gay lifestyle, while becoming a lawyer, then even though he hates the Republican platform, especially its attitude about homosexuality, he ends up working for GOP.  He  helps them gain power, while rubbing elbows with President Reagan and Bush.  All the while, longing to find his real mother in Ireland, even as he begins dying of AIDS. 

        Reading the book and watching the film was fascinating, because it really rounded out the whole story, seeing it from both sides--Philomena’s and then Mike’s, her son.  I enjoyed the story in both media, although it bugged me how Philomena continued to be so loyal to the Church after what they had done to her, and how Mike, her son, could work for the Republican Party, while watching their deadly attitude toward gays, refusing to do anything during the lethal outbreak of AIDS.  It also really bugged me that Mike’s work with the Republican Party focused on how to best gerrymander areas to enable the Republicans to win elections.

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